Thursday, August 11, 2011

After 207 Years, Bodies Of 13 Americans Still In Libya.

I've written before, here and here, about my family connection to an obscure bit of American history.

Dr. Jonathan Cowdery's father and my great-great-great-great-great grandfather were brothers. Dr. Cowdery was ship’s surgeon on the U.S.S. Philadelphia, which ran aground while fighting pirates in the Mediterranean Sea. Three-hundred officers and sailors were captured and imprisoned in Tripoli. Thirteen officers and sailors were killed trying to rescue them. Dr. Cowdery identified the remains and supervised their burial in Green Square.

They're still there.

In the earliest of those two previous posts, I linked to a newspaper article that is no longer up. Here, instead, is a link to another account of the story on the "Remember the Intrepid" web site. It is run by Bill Kelly, who knows all about this stuff, especially the part about the remains of the 13 Americans still buried there. Although people in Libya have a lot going on right now, efforts to repatriate the remains continue, according to Kelly.